Android Auto won't play music on phone

[mzman]

After Android Auto was updated with the new Google Assistant, it inherited a problem from Google Assistant: it's impossible to play locally stored music on your phone. Trying to do that simply gives you "you need a subscription....".

How do we get Google to fix this? It's a crazy problem, given that Android Auto is used primarily for music playback I would expect!

 

[foxbat121]

After Android Auto was updated with the new Google Assistant, it inherited a problem from Google Assistant: it's impossible to play locally stored music on your phone. Trying to do that simply gives you "you need a subscription....".

How do we get Google to fix this? It's a crazy problem, given that Android Auto is used primarily for music playback I would expect!

There is a music/headphone button. Press it will launch your favourite AA compatible music player. That should play your local music. Google Assistant is a cloud product. Don't expect it to be able to search what's on your phone.

 

[mzman]

There is a music/headphone button. Press it will launch your favourite AA compatible music player. That should play your local music. Google Assistant is a cloud product. Don't expect it to be able to search what's on your phone.

It doesn't work. It worked for years before last Fall. Try it - it won't play local music as it used to.

 

[ireknole]

After Android Auto was updated with the new Google Assistant, it inherited a problem from Google Assistant: it's impossible to play locally stored music on your phone. Trying to do that simply gives you "you need a subscription....".

How do we get Google to fix this? It's a crazy problem, given that Android Auto is used primarily for music playback I would expect!

I emailed Google support and they said they are "looking into this bug". From what in understand though, this bug has been there for months now with no fix. Unfortunately, Google is probably in no hurry to fix it since it forces ignorant people to subscribe to their crappy service (I prefer Spotify). Since I only use Android auto for downloaded music and maps, this absolutely breaks Android Auto for me.

I just tried to disable Google Assistant in the Google app, I'll report back if that helped at all.

 

[foxbat121]

It doesn't work. It worked for years before last Fall. Try it - it won't play local music as it used to.

It certainly works fine for me w/o any problems using Google Play Music app in AA.

 

[ireknole]

It certainly works fine for me w/o any problems using Google Play Music app in AA.

Do you have an active play music subscription? That could be why you're not having issues. It stops us because we don't have one.

It's also only playing songs from their service, so if you have a song downloaded that's not in their service, try voicing it and see if it plays.

 

[foxbat121]

No, I have zero subscriptions to any service. I just launch the play music app and it plays local music just fine.

As for voice play, as I mentioned earlier, it won't work because Assistant is a cloud service.

 

[ireknole]

No, I have zero subscriptions to any service. I just launch the play music app and it plays local music just fine.

As for voice play, as I mentioned earlier, it won't work because Assistant is a cloud service.

But our point is that it worked before this update. Our music is in the "cloud", uploaded to the Google play music service and downloaded to our phones by the Google play music app. So this isn't just music we copied over to our phones, this is music on Google's servers.

 

[foxbat121]

Just like Chromecast can't cast local contents, I don't expect Google Assistant ever be able to look through your locally downloaded music. The entire Assistant stack is purely cloud based and works across different devices, e.g. Google Home, Android Phone, Android TV, Android Wear watch and now Android Auto.

 

[ireknole]

Just like Chromecast can't cast local contents, I don't expect Google Assistant ever be able to look through your locally downloaded music. The entire Assistant stack is purely cloud based and works across different devices, e.g. Google Home, Android Phone, Android TV, Android Wear watch and now Android Auto.

I'll say it one more time, it's music uploaded to Google play music. It's not random local files.

 

[foxbat121]

Take a look at the thread title..

 

[ireknole]

Take a look at the thread title..

The OP's title is referring to the same thing I'm saying. They're trying to play music that was uploaded to the Google play music service and downloaded to their phone via Google play music. The fact that it's downloaded shouldn't change anything since the songs still show up in the app if you search for them. It makes no sense that Google Assistant can't also play these tracks when they're in the available in the app. We're not asking it to search the phone to find the songs, the app already knows the songs are there. It should search the app and the songs should show up for it just like when doing a manual search.

 

[davekr]

I'm also frustrated by this problem. I have my music uploaded to Google Play Music and have downloaded all of it locally to my phone. Prior to the Android Auto update that included Google Assistant, I could say "Hey Google, play <artist - album> album" and it would play it from my local library. With the new update, if I try to do the same voice command, I get a reply that Youtube Music is not installed. Since the AA Google Play Music app doesn't let you browse by artist or album, if I haven't recently played the album, my only option is to unlock my phone, open the Google Play Music app and start playing the album that way. This has made Android Auto much less convenient for me. I'm not about to subscribe to Google Play Music or Youtube Music in order to be able to use voice controls. I hope Google does something about this.

 

[dhoppy]

I'm having the exact same problem. I use the google music manager to sync music from my PC to google music, and then google play on my phone with android auto to listen to the music. I used to be able to say "Play song X by band Y" and it would. Now it tells me to get a subscription. The only way I can do it now is to start playing the song before I plug in to my car stereo.

 

[tim b2]

FIXED!!! At least for me...
Google Assistant is the problem, so turn it off!
(To be clear my issue was the voice command no longer looked at the downloaded music files in my library and would always give me the warning "you need to be subscribed to Google play services blah blah blah, but I have xx song/artist radio station for you." Even though I clearly had gigs of downloaded music in my library.

1. Open Android Auto
2. Hit '3 line' icon in upper left
3. Go to "settings"
4. Go to "Google Assistant"
5. Go to "Phone"
6. Now turn off Google Assistant

Voila, now it uses the old method of searching which recognizes the downloaded music files on your library! Once again you can load your local files through voice command!

I hope this worked for you, because after so much research it was great to try something that worked! Good Luck!

 

[HamNuggets]

FIXED!!! At least for me...
Google Assistant is the problem, so turn it off!
(To be clear my issue was the voice command no longer looked at the downloaded music files in my library and would always give me the warning "you need to be subscribed to Google play services blah blah blah, but I have xx song/artist radio station for you." Even though I clearly had gigs of downloaded music in my library.

1. Open Android Auto
2. Hit '3 line' icon in upper left
3. Go to "settings"
4. Go to "Google Assistant"
5. Go to "Phone"
6. Now turn off Google Assistant

Voila, now it uses the old method of searching which recognizes the downloaded music files on your library! Once again you can load your local files through voice command!

I hope this worked for you, because after so much research it was great to try something that worked! Good Luck!

The newest version of Android Auto which deployed yesterday (3.0.570554-release) not only won't allow you to do this anymore, but it also now automatically checks if you're using the latest version of the "Google" app. This means that the other common workaround of telling Android to remove all updates to the Google app is also now non-functional as the new Android Auto release will refuse to start until all apps it needs to run are updated.

 

[ajh5408]

I experienced this same problem and found that if you add "from my library" to the end of your verbal request, it will allow you to play back music that you've uploaded (e.g. "Play album <Album Name> from my library").

Seems like this should be unnecessary, and that it should search your library first, but I understand they're likely just trying to sell subscriptions.

 

[Wade7]

This has been bugging me as well for the past few months. I can have it play my local music by just asking for an artist when it's not plugged in the car in Android auto. And if I want to use my local music I have to do it on my phone which is making it more dangerous a potential liability against Google knowingly doing this. A reason Andre Auto was nicer is was hands-free but not anymore.

 

[ireknole]

I experienced this same problem and found that if you add "from my library" to the end of your verbal request, it will allow you to play back music that you've uploaded (e.g. "Play album <Album Name> from my library").

Seems like this should be unnecessary, and that it should search your library first, but I understand they're likely just trying to sell subscriptions.

I tried that this morning and it either errored out or added "from my library" to the end of my request.

 

[Wade7]

I have noticed that it works as it should if you have no signal - when in the parking garage worked like it used to